Email subscription form

You can set up one or more email subscription forms to allow visitors to your site to sign up to receive newsletters, updates, or other manual email blasts.

Visitors who subscribe will added to your contact database.

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Signing up for email subscriptions is separate and distinct from the process of subscribing or unsubscribing to automatic emails.

You can search for subscribers by subscription type, and send an email blast to each group of subscribers. Subscribers do not automatically receive the content they signed up for – it is up to you to send mass emails to your subscribers.

You can embed a Wild Apricot subscription form on another website using widgets.

Using a subscription form

For logged in contacts, the contact fields on the subscription form are filled in automatically using information from their contact record.

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If the subscriber is not already a contact in your database, they will be automatically added after submitting the completed form.

Setting up an email subscription form

You can create as many different subscription forms as you wish. You can limit access to a subscription form by placing it on a restricted page.

To add a subscription form to a page on your site, follow these steps:

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Go to Sites pages (under the Website menu) and create or begin editing the site page where you want the blog to appear.

Click the Gadgets icon to display the list of available gadgets.

Drag the subscription form gadget from the list, and drop it where you want it to appear on the page. You can insert it into a section within a layout, or above or below a layout.

When a layout cell or placeholder is empty, a Drop gadget or layout here prompt will be displayed. When you drag a gadget over an empty layout cell or placeholder, it turns green, indicating that you can drop the gadget there. When you drag a gadget above or below a layout, a prompt will appear indicating that you can drop the gadget before or after the layout.

After you have dropped the gadget in the desired location, hover your pointer over it and click the Settings icon.

From the gadget settings panel on the left, choose the desired settings for the subscription form, including the subscription source. For more information, see Adjusting subscription form settings (below).

Adjusting subscription form settings

Once you add a subscription form gadget to a page to your site, you can modify its settings, include the subscription source.

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Gadget settings appear in a panel on the left side (which can be hidden to maximize the page design area). To display the settings panel, you position your pointer over the gadget – while editing a site page – then click the gadget's Settings icon.

You can modify the following settings for subscription form gadgets:

Setting

Description

Subscription source

The name used to identify this subscription source. This name is used to distinguish different subscriptions when searching for subscribers using Subscription source as the search criteria. For example, depending on what people are signing up for, you might want to use Newsletter or Site update alerts are the subscription source.

Fields to include

Select the fields to be included on the subscription form. You can choose some or all of your common fields, but you cannot deselect the Email field. If included on the form, the First name and Last name fields must be completed before clicking the Subscribe button.

Send confirmation email to

Choose whether to send a confirmation email to the subscriber and/or the administrator. To customize the standard subscription confirmation email, go to Settings and click Subscription form email under Contact settings. Within the body of the email, you can add or replace text, links, pictures, and macros using the content editor.

Margins

The amount of space – in pixels – that appears outside the gadget. You can set top, bottom, left, and right margins separately.

HTML ID

A unique identifier by which the gadget can be referenced within custom CSS or JavaScript code. The identifier is automatically generated but can be replaced with a more readable or memorable one (e.g. MySubscriptionFormGadget).

Searching for and emailing subscribers

When a visitor signs up for a subscription, the subscription is identified using the Subscription source specified for the form within the subscription form gadget settings.

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To search for all contacts who have subscribed to receive emails via a particular subscription form, perform an advanced contact page, using Subscription source as the search criteria and selecting the appropriate subscription source value(s).

Once you have displayed a list of subscribers, you can email them the content they signed up for by clicking the Email contacts button.

Changing email subscriptions

To view which email subscriptions a contact is currently signed up for, look under Subscription sources on the Email settings and log tab of the contact record.

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To change the subscription sources for a contact, click the Edit button. On the screen that appears, check the sources you want to subscribe the contact to.